Saint Agnes...

At the halfway point of my walk around Pagham Harbour was the diminutive church at Church Norton. Inside I saw a rather crude memorial to John and Agatha Lewis, Lord and Lady of the Manor, and, next to it, in an alcove, an equally crude relief sculpture which stopped me in my tracks. A woman, nearly naked, was flanked by two men, armed with tools that looked like Mole grips, which seemed to be fastened onto the woman’s bare breasts. I went back to the van, for my camera and tripod, and took a pic.

The woman, as I subsequently learned, was another Agatha, who lived in Sicily during the 6th century AD. In a time of persecution, she vowed to remain chaste and dedicate her life to God. One man, a local judge, wouldn’t take no for an answer, and had Agatha arrested. Though she was tortured, she refused to renounce either her Christian faith or her chastity. One of the tortures that she is thought to have suffered was to have her breasts cut off, and she is often depicted carrying her breasts on a plate. She died while being tortured, and was subsequently raised to sainthood…

Pagham Harbour...

There was a pool table in the pub last night, and I was playing ‘killer’ with the locals, which meant I woke up this morning with a sore head. So I went for a walk this morning around Pagham Harbour, an RSPB reserve. I saw a kingfisher dive into a river and, moments later, a stoat swam across it. I watched a big, noisy flock of brent geese on the saltmarsh, interspersed with redshanks, oystercatchers, curlews and whistling wigeons. I spotted a pair of pintails, a small flock of grey plovers and, best of all, a great white egret in flight.   

Bird watchers are friendly folk, on the whole, happy to chat, share their finds and point out some rarity to the uninitiated. But this morning I found the exception. “Have you seen the grey plovers?”, I said to a guy looking through binoculars. He looked at me with utter contempt. “They’re everywhere”, he said. “That’s like saying you’ve seen a sparrow”. I hope Santa brings him something nice for Christmas, like a sunny disposition...

A silence shared...

Went to Quaker meeting this morning in Littlehampton. It’s easy to find a meeting: just go onto the ‘Quakers in Britain’ website and type in your location. Armed with the postcode, the satnav lady does the rest. The meeting was typical; with my advanced years and mud-coloured clothing, I fitted right in. Chatted afterwards to a few friends, including an ex-nun from Leeds (and that’s a sentence I might never type again).

I always leave a meeting feeling ‘settled’. That’s ‘settled’ like the contents of a box of cornflakes, which, according to a panel on the box, may ‘settle’ during transit. It may seem strange for an atheist to enjoy an hour of silence with - mostly - believers, but Quakers don’t pry about your beliefs or lack of them. I also like their lack of evangelical zeal; they won’t come knocking at your door and try to convert you to their way of thinking. This also means, however, that friends are dying off quicker than new friends are recruited… with predictable consequences...

Lombard Street in Petworth...

Dogs...

The bar of the Blue Ship. The guy on the right brought in his two dogs (or maybe they're shaggy ponies?). One dog is eyeing up a little dog on the settle as a between-meals snack...

Pulborough Brooks...

The nomadic life offers opportunities for last-minute changes of plan. I saw, by chance, a sign for Pulborough Brooks, an RSPB reserve, and had a few restful hours bird-spotting and taking pix. The wetlands were quite animated, with the loudest noise being the honking of geese and the whistling of wigeons. I saw kites, buzzards, marsh harrier, shovelers, teal and black tailed godwit, but the star attraction was a pectoral sandpiper: tiny, demure and unshowy. It was my first sighting (and I wouldn’t have been able to identify it without help from a couple of expert guys)…

According to an entry on the RSPB website, “Pectoral sandpipers breed in the Arctic areas of North America and Siberia and are very long distance migrants wintering mainly in South America, with some birds in the Siberian population wintering in Australia or New Zealand.  Some birds winter in Africa. They are classed in the UK and Western Europe as scarce passage migrants as a few birds turn up each year and they have been seen at Pulborough very occasionally before”…

Blue Ship...

Kipped last night near a splendid little pub, the Blue Ship, near Billingshurst, where beer is drawn straight from the barrel and served through a hatch. Woke up this morning and wrote about 4,000 words of my book. That’s a good start to the day, as is finding some good pic sales from Alamy…

How nomads get a haircut...

Petworth...

Petworth is a new port of call on my travels: a tiny place which obviously thinks very highly of itself. If I came back in a couple of weeks I could enjoy a literary festival - Anne Widdicombe, yay! - or a clarinet recital. Shops are called Artful Teasing, Guilt Lingerie and Hemming’s Wine Merchants, and all the antiques are ‘fine’. There’s a cobbled street, leading up to the church, lined with bijou art galleries.

If they heard on the news that the North of England had been immolated by a gigantic fireball, leaving no survivors north of the Trent, the good people of Petworth would raise a quizzical eyebrow, turn the page of their Daily Telegraph and pour themselves another cup of Earl Grey tea…

Langstone...

I have a recurring dream, or, rather, a recurring theme, in which my camera is stolen. I wake up and it may take me a few minutes to realise that my camera hasn’t been stolen after all, but is on the table beside me. It’s always such a relief. Last night’s dream was another variation. I left my camera bag behind a market stall, while I bagged up some fruit and veg. When I went to pay, and pick up my bag, the stallholder said he’d sold it…

High tide at the Royal Oak, Langstone...

Langstone Mill...

Bosham...

Had a walk around Bosham yesterday afternoon, at high tide, with the wind whipping up the waves and whistling through the tension wires of sailing boats bobbing up and down on their moorings. Had a pint in the Anchor Bleu pub (pretentious? moi?), as water seeped up between the floorboards. Had another walk this morning, at low tide - getting plenty of pix - before tea and a bacon sarnie at the Breeze Café…

High tide at Bosham...

Beyond satire...

It’s getting harder for satirists to make a living. Trump’s in the White House, and today I hear that President Mugabe of Zimbabwe has been made a ‘goodwill ambassador’ by the World Health Organization, to promote health causes, despite everything he has done, over the years, to undermine the country’s system of healthcare…

Pray?

Toad in the Hole...

As a fan of pub games - darts, pool, dominoes, etc - I’m sad to see so many of them disappearing. So I’ve enjoyed finding some regional games which seem to be thriving, such as quoits - outdoors - in the Yorkshire Dales and North York Moors, and pubs with skittle alleys. I’ve just discovered another game, called Toad in the Hole, traditionally played in pubs in East Sussex. The object of the game is simple: toss small metal discs onto a small, low table with a hole in the top (from the same distance as when playing darts). The scoring is simple: one point for a disc landing - and staying - on the table top, and two points for getting the ‘toad’ down the hole.

I watched three guys playing the game, with a skill that comes from regular practice. One guy dropped all four of his discs down the hole: a feat I might replicate once in a thousand attempts. He retrieved his discs by opening up a little drawer in the table…

Uckfield...

Stayed in Uckfield last night, the well-known anagram, and had a writing day…

A bit of bother...

I was in a pub yesterday, and witnessed a little scene. It was only 7pm but a young East European man was drunk and making a nuisance of himself. The barman had to eject him (making me glad I didn’t have to take on this particular task). “I wait for you”, the young guy said in broken English, pointing at the door and beyond, “and I keel you”. He left as the barman started to phone the police…

Brightling...

The parish church in Brightling has a pyramid in the churchyard, the handiwork and final resting place of one ‘Mad Jack' Fuller (although he preferred to be called ‘Honest John’ Fuller). Mad Jack (1757-1834) was the village squire, well-known as a philanthropist, patron of the arts and a builder of follies… though he blotted his copybook with his support of slavery…

Storm Ophelia...

The weather on the south coast is mild and balmy, but I’m catching the news about all the places in the south-west of Ireland I explored a month ago, and the damage being done by the tail-end of Storm Ophelia…

The 17th Sunday after Trinity: a big date in the church calendar...

Dungeness...

Spent the morning taking pix around Dungeness. It’s a bit like Hebden Bridge (in the way that locals seem to be competing as to who can surround their dwellings with the most junk), except the mostly wooden dwellings are spread over a few square miles of Kent shingle. I saw some bird-watchers training their spotting scopes on the garden of one shack. What was I missing? A Radde's Warbler, apparently. “It looks like a fat Chiffchaff”, one birder said. It was around yesterday, but hadn’t shown up today…

Twitchers wondering where the Radde's Warbler has gone...

They won't find a Radde's Warbler in here...

Heading south...

Had a couple of days with sister Kari in Hampshire, before heading south to the coast. My immediate aim is to get 20,000 pix online by the end of the year, and to crack on with the book…

Castle Combe again...

Evershot...

"All is safely gathered in": All Saints Church, Evershot...

Lacock...

Saturday socialising in Taunton, Sunday taking pix around some pretty villages…

Castle Combe...

Had a productive day with my camera, first at Lacock then at Castle Combe…

The Castle Inn, Castle Combe...

Selfie, Castle Combe...

Bede House...

The Bede House in Lyddington, Leicestershire...

Postie in Boxford...

In Marlborough this evening, after a productive day taking pix…

Hallaton

I didn’t think I had anything in common with fashion designer Vivienne Westwood, until I read yesterday that she only has a bath once a week…

The buttercross in the village of Hallaton, Leicestershire...